As pope visits Morocco, tiny Jewish community looks on with quiet pride

Suzanne Harroch speaks and sings in Judeo-Moroccan, a language of a once-thriving Jewish community that numbered about 300,000 - one of the largest in the Muslim world.

 

Today, she and her husband are two of only 2,500 Jews left in Morocco, a community that is ageing and dwindling even as it enjoys constitutional recognition and protection.

Pope, Moroccan King Mohammed VI

"I identify myself as Moroccan first, then Jewish," the mother of three said in her house in Rabat ahead of Pope Francis' visit, which Jews have welcomed as an opportunity to highlight a status they say is unique in the Muslim world.

Suzanne Harroch, a Jewish Moroccan singer poses for a portrait in her house in Rabat, Morocco

On Saturday, Jewish leaders joined Christian representatives in the front row at two events presided over by the pope and King Mohammed VI on interfaith dialogue.

Pope conducts Mass

Morocco's 2011 constitution recognizes the "Hebraic" constituent as a component of the national identity. Jews in the north African Kingdom have their own courts, family code and schools and even a state-supported Jewish heritage museum. Unlike many Moroccan Jews, who left for Israel, Europe and America in the past six decades because of grinding poverty and political uncertainty, Harroch and her husband decided to stay.

Pope and King Mohammed VI

"Morocco is where I belong. I feel safe here," said Harroch, who worked as hotel director until her recent retirement. Her husband is also Jewish and works as a doctor serving the Muslim community. She now dedicates her time to singing in Judeo-Moroccan as part of a musical group made up of Muslim musicians who help her delve deep into the country's ancient Jewish heritage.

Ancient artifacts are seen on display at Belghazi Museum in Kenitra near Rabat city, Morocco

The Moroccan Jewish community dates back to Roman times and for centuries Jews served the royal court as ambassadors, diplomats, ministers and advisors. During the French colonial era, King Mohammed V refused to apply the anti-Semitic measures imposed by the collaborationist French Vichy regime during the Nazi occupation of France in World War Two. In 2010, his grandson, the current king, launched a program to restore hundreds of synagogues, Jewish cemeteries and heritage sites across the country, and reinstated the original names of some Jewish neighborhoods that had been changed during and after the colonial era.

Ancient artifacts are seen on display at the Belghazi Museum in Kenitra, Morocco

The king also paid for the restoration of the Jewish cemetery in the island nation of Cape Verde, more than 2,000 miles away, as it contains the graves of Moroccan Jews who emigrated there. Moroccan Jews say they feel protected by the king. "He is the head of all the faithful, both Muslims and Jews," said Davide Toledano, head of Rabat's Jewish community, which now has less than 200 members.

Zhor Rehihil, director of the Museum of Moroccan Judaism

Morocco's 23,000 Roman Catholics - most of them expatriate Europeans, mainly French, and sub-Saharan African migrants - make up less one percent of the population of about 35 million. Addressing the pope on Saturday, the king, who is also Morocco's top religious authority, said: "I cannot speak of the land of Islam as if only Muslims lived there .... I protect Moroccan Jews as well as Christians from other countries who are living in Morocco." Zhor Rehihel, director of the museum of Moroccan Judaism in Casablanca, is a Muslim.

"Jewish heritage is part of our collective and diverse Moroccan identity that we should preserve she said.

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German train car arrives in New York for Auschwitz exhibit

On a Sunday morning, a crane lowered a rusty remnant of the Holocaust onto tracks outside Manhattan's Museum of Jewish Heritage -- a vintage German train car like those used to transport men, women and children to Auschwitz and other Nazi death camps.

 

The windowless box car is among 700 Holocaust artifacts, most never before seen in the United States, which are being prepared for one of the largest exhibits ever on Auschwitz -- a once ordinary Polish town called Oswiecim that the Nazis occupied and transformed into a human monstrosity.

Cattle car used to transport Jews by the Nazis being lowered into place near the museum

The New York exhibit opens May 8, the day in 1945 when Germany surrendered and the camps were liberated. German-made freight wagons like the one in the exhibit were used to deport people from their homes all around Europe. About 1 million Jews and nearly 100,000 others were gassed, shot, hanged or starved in Auschwitz out of a total of 6 million who perished in the Holocaust.

Nazi era train car

That fate awaited them after a long ride on the kind of train car that's the centerpiece of the New York exhibit. "There were 80 people squeezed into one wooden car, with no facilities, just a pail to urinate," remembers Ray Kaner, a 92-year-old woman who still works as a Manhattan dental office manager. "You couldn't lie down, so you had to sleep sitting, and it smelled." She and her sister had been forced to board the train in August 1944 in Poland, after their parents died in the Lotz ghetto where Jews were held captive. The Germans promised the sisters a better new life.

Holocaust survivors

"We believed them, and we schlepped everything we could carry," she said. "We still had great hope." Once in Auschwitz, "they took away whatever we carried," were beaten, stripped naked and their heads shaved bald. Titled "Auschwitz. Not long ago. Not far away," the upcoming exhibit will transport visitors into the grisly faceoff between perpetrators and victims. On display will be concrete posts from an Auschwitz fence covered in barbed and electrified wires; a gas mask used by the SS; a desk belonging to Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Hoss; and a dagger and helmet used by Heinrich Himmler, the chief architect of Hitler's "final solution."

Nazi SS commander Heinrich Himmler with his daughter Gudrun in 1938 (Photo: AP)

The collection of prisoners' personal items includes a comb improvised from scrap metal; a trumpet one survivor used to save his life by entertaining his captors; and tickets for passage on the St. Louis, a ship of refugees whom the United States refused to accept, sending them back to Europe where some were killed by the Nazis. The materials are on loan from about 20 institutions worldwide, plus private collections, curated by Robert Jan van Pelt, a leading Auschwitz authority, and other experts in conjunction with the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in Poland and Musealia, a Spanish company that organizes traveling shows. The New York one will run through Jan. 3. The eight-decade-old box car brought to New York on a cargo ship came from a German auction, in terrible condition. Van Pelt's team bought it and restored it. "The dark, smelly car represents that moment of transition from the world of the living that people understood and trusted to the radically alien world of the camps where the doors opened and families were separated forever," said van Pelt, whose relatives in Amsterdam lived down the street from Anne Frank's family.

(Photo: AP)

"The Nazis wanted to wipe out every last Jew in the world," and at the end of a train trip, "this is where the last goodbyes were said." The exhibit items all belonged to somebody -- most now gone, either because they were murdered in camps or survived and have since died. Some people who inherited artifacts came forward with stories attached to them. Thousands of survivors live in New York City, among the last who can offer personal testimony. And that's why the exhibit is important, said real estate developer Bruce Ratner, the chairman of the museum's board of trustees. "While we had all hoped after the Holocaust that the international community would come together to stop genocide, mass murder and ethnic cleansing, these crimes continue and there are more refugees today than at any time since the Second World War," said Ratner. "So my hope for this exhibit is that it motivates all of us to make the connections between the world of the past and the world of the present, and to take a firm stand against hate."

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Palestinian-born Berliner leads efforts to rebuild synagogue

Raed Saleh was 5 years old when his family left their Palestinian village in the West Bank for a better life in Germany. Now 41, the Muslim has become one of Berlin's top politicians and is spearheading efforts to rebuild a synagogue in the German capital that was destroyed by the Nazis 80 years ago.

 

What may sound utopian in parts of the world where hostilities between Muslims and Jews run high has become a reality in Berlin: Jews, Muslims and Christians have joined forces to rebuild what used to be one of the city's biggest synagogues.

Thewindows of the so-called youth-synagogue, the remaining building of the 'Fraenkelufer' synagogue, are illuminated in Berlin.

In recent years a surviving section of the Fraenkelufer Synagogue, which stands on the banks of a canal in the city's Kreuzberg neighborhood, has become home to a vibrant and diverse community for Jews from across the world, but as the community grows the space isn't enough. Co-existence isn't always easy in Berlin, either, but with the blessing of people like Saleh, who heads Berlin's Social Democrats and is a lawmaker in the city's government, the interfaith effort may come to fruition in a few years. "In the past, Berlin tore down the wall between west and east," Saleh said during a recent visit to the synagogue. "Today, we must tear down the walls of hatred."

Jonathan Marcus a German member of 'Fraenkelufer' synagogue

"The growing anti-Semitism and hostility toward Muslims, the growing intolerance toward each other -- this cannot go on," Saleh said. The Fraenkelufer synagogue was opened as an Orthodox house of prayer in 1916 and held 2,000 worshippers. Before the Third Reich, Germany's flourishing Jewish community counted about 560,000 people and was known for its cultural and intellectual prominence. In 1938, however, five years after the Nazis had come to power in Germany, mobs destroyed parts of the building during the Night of Broken Glass, or Kristallnacht, in which synagogues, Jewish stores and homes were vandalized across the country. In the Holocaust that followed, the Nazis and their henchmen murdered 6 million Jews across Europe.

Palestinian-German politician Raed Saleh poses for a photo near a remembrance plaque

Today, only a side wing of the building, known as the youth synagogue, remains in the middle of what has become a mostly Arab and Turkish immigrant district dotted with mosques, tea houses and kebab stands. Nonetheless, the small synagogue has attracted a growing number of young Jewish families who have moved to the German capital in recent years from Israel, the United States, the former Soviet Union, South America and Australia. Saleh said he met up with some of the temple's members over hummus and falafel a while back and asked them how he could help support the growing community. The answer was clear: they asked for more space.

'Fraenkelufer' synagogue, in Berlin

"When we have bigger events and celebrations, this space is bursting at the seams, it's very quickly getting very tight," said Jonathan Marcus, 38, who is a fifth-generation German member of the Fraenkelufer synagogue. He said there's also a need for additional prayer space, study rooms and a kindergarten. Saleh promised to turn his words into action last year and now chairs a diverse board of trustees including Jews, Christians and Muslims who seek to raise the estimated 24 million euros ($27.3 million) needed to rebuild the temple's main building, which before the war was a white neo-classical structure fronted by columns. There are no architectural blueprints yet, but many enthusiastic supporters who hope to collect enough donations to break the ground five years from now.

Remembrance plaque

One of them, Nirit Bialer, a 40-year-old Israeli business development manager who moved to Germany 13 years ago, said she can't wait for her dreams of a cultural center within the synagogue to become real. "I think it's great that Berlin enables us to work together -- people of different faiths, of different backgrounds," Bialer said before attending a prayer service on the eve of the Purim holiday inside the synagogue's somewhat cramped prayer room. "The fact that Raed Saleh is Palestinian by roots is a non-issue ... for me he is a Berliner." So far, Saleh says reactions to the project have been overwhelmingly positive. Even some Muslim communities vowed to collect money for the synagogue in their mosques after Friday prayers.

"In the end this synagogue is more than just a synagogue: It's a sign for togetherness of religions, cultures and traditions," Saleh said.

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German family to give $11M after hearing extent of Nazi past

One of Germany's richest families, whose company owns a controlling interest in Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, Panera Bread, Pret a Manger and other well-known businesses, plans to donate millions to charity after learning about their ancestors' enthusiastic support of Adolf Hitler and use of forced laborers under the Nazis, according to a report Sunday.

 

In a four-page report, the Bild newspaper reported that documents uncovered in Germany, France and the U.S. reveal that Albert Reimann Sr. and Albert Reimann Jr. used Russian civilians and French POWs as forced laborers.

Family spokesman Peter Harf

Family spokesman Peter Harf, who is one of two managing partners of the Reimann's JAB Holding Company, said recent internal research confirmed Bild's findings. "It is all correct," he told the newspaper. "Reimann senior and Reimann junior were guilty ... they belonged in jail." The father and son, who died in 1954 and 1984, did not talk about the Nazi era and the family had thought that all of the company's connection to the Nazis had been revealed in a 1978 report, Harf said. But after reading documents kept by the family, the younger generation began to ask questions and commissioned a University of Munich historian in 2014 to examine the Reimann history more thoroughly, Harf said.

Nazi SS troops

The expert presented his preliminary findings to the Reimann children and grandchildren, as well as Hanf, several weeks ago, he said. "We were all ashamed and turned as white as the wall," he said. "There is nothing to gloss over. These crimes are disgusting." In addition al Krispy Kreme Doughnuts and Pret a Manger, the Luxembourg-based JAB Holding Co. has controlling stakes in Keurig Green Mountain, Peet's Coffee & Tea, Caribou Coffee Co., Panera Bread and other companies. Many German companies have acknowledged using slave laborers during the Nazi era and have conducted their own independent investigations. In 2000, the German government approved a 10 billion mark (about 5.1 billion euro) fund to provide compensation, with half the money coming from companies like Bayer, Siemens, Deutsche Bank, Daimler-Benz, Volkswagen, and AEG. Bild reported that even before the Nazis came to power, the Reimanns donated to the paramilitary SS. During World War II, the company used forced laborers in its industrial chemicals company. It was not clear how many were used overall, but Bild said in 1943, 175 forced laborers were being used, about 30 percent of its workforce. In addition to Russian and other Eastern European civilians, the company used French prisoners of war -- about whom Reimann Jr. complained in a letter to the Ludwigshafen mayor in 1940 that they weren't working hard enough. After the war, the two were investigated by the occupying Allied powers and initially banned by the French from continuing their business activities but then had the judgment overturned by the Americans, Bild reported. Harf said the family would donate 10 million euros ($11.3 million) to a not-yet-determined charity as a gesture, and once the historian's report is complete, it would be released to the public. "The whole truth must be put on the table," he said.

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World ORT and Pope Francis sign new deal to extend Scholas World Youth Encounter

Pope Francis has met Dario Werthein, World ORT Board of Trustees Chair, and Avi Ganon, World ORT Director General and CEO, to sign an agreement which will see the fourth Scholas World Youth Encounter take place in Mexico City later this year.

 

The event – which will bring together hundreds students from around the world to share their passion, experience and ideas for a more tolerant and peaceful society – is a joint project between World ORT and the Pope’s Scholas Occurrentes Foundation.

The Pope with ORT Director Avi Ganon

This year’s youth encounter will begin on October 28 in the Mexican capital, running until November 1. It is expected around 60 World ORT students from across the network – including from Argentina, Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, Italy, Spain, South Africa and Israel – will attend. The theme will be ‘Encounter and Exchange’, with the goal being to generate a framework for 15-to-17-year-olds from different nationalities, religions and socio-economic backgrounds to start a dialogue to promote education and to encourage a more humane, tolerant and peaceful world. Following the meeting with Pope Francis at the Vatican on March 21, Dario Werthein said: “We are very excited to work again with Scholas at the World Youth Encounter. We share a common goal, that is to create a collaborative environment and promote lifelong education to achieve the socio-economic development of the young students.” Avi Ganon said: “World ORT is proud to be a link between religions to the next generation.

“In addition to our role as pioneers in STEM education, we are pleased to be a leader in promoting universal values such as tolerance between religions and understanding between people.”

The three previous youth meetings took place in the Vatican City, Jerusalem and Buenos Aires. Participating World ORT students benefited from a once-in-a-lifetime experience to meet peers from around the world and strengthen their understanding of different cultures and religions. Scholas Occurrentes president José María del Corral added: "It is a joy for us to be able to give further opportunities to these young people. We create the space, but they fill it – they are the content, they are the ones who continue to dream our dreams. “For this reason, we want the Pope to be able once again to bless the meeting for coexistence, knowing that education is the goal of the encounter.” Avi Ganon and Dario Werthein were joined at the Vatican by Arturo Merikanskas, ORT Mexico President. The signing of the agreement to continue the youth encounter program is testament to what can be achieved when young people of different cultures, societies and religions come together and collaborate with each other in the spirit of equality, tolerance and mutual understanding. The World ORT network has always been driven by Jewish values and the desire to encourage the young people of today to contribute to the world around them for a better tomorrow. • World ORT is a global education network driven by Jewish values. We reach 300,000 people a year, in 35 countries, and World ORT is one of the largest educational charities in the world. We provide a combination of high-level science and technology education with strengthened Jewish identity to bridge the gap between ability and opportunity – and to ensure the continuity of Jewish life worldwide. • Scholas is an international non-profit entity driven by Pope Francis that is present in more than 190 countries and brings together more than 446,000 schools and educational networks around the world. It works with public and private schools and educational communities, of all religious and secular backgrounds.

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Supreme Court won’t intervene in oldest US synagogue dispute

The U.S. Supreme Court declined to intervene Monday in a fight over control of the nation’s oldest synagogue and its religious bells worth millions, leaving in place a ruling that the Rhode Island synagogue will remain the property of a New York congregation.

 

The Congregation Jeshuat Israel in Newport, Rhode Island, had asked a judge to declare that it owned the more than 250-year-old Touro Synagogue and a set of Colonial-era Torah bells, called rimonim. It had a plan to sell the bells to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston for $7.4 million as a way to shore up its finances.

 

Touro Synagogue

Manhattan’s Congregation Shearith Israel, the nation’s oldest Jewish congregation, became trustee of Touro after Jews left Newport in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It fought the plan to sell the bells. Congregation Jeshuat Israel has worshipped at Touro since the late 1800s, and the two sides have periodically fought since then over who controls it. Lou Solomon, a lawyer for Congregation Shearith Israel, struck a conciliatory tone, saying he looked forward to “a return of harmonious relations” between them and Touro’s congregation. “It’s a national treasure, it’s going to remain open for all Jews,” Solomon said. But he added a caveat. “We’re going to go forward with or without them. It is my hope that there will not be any more hostile acts,” he said. A trial judge awarded control of the property and the bells to the Newport group, but the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals went the other way, giving them to the group from Manhattan. Gary Naftalis, a lawyer for the Newport congregants, said they were disappointed. “Our petition raised significant constitutional issues affecting the survival of Touro Synagogue and the rights of religious organizations in America,” he said, adding that they hope the congregation’s “right to continue to pray in the historic Touro Synagogue, as it has for over a century, will be respected.” Solomon said the New York congregation plans to reach out to the one in Newport soon with an offer to meet and plan for ways to move forward together. “We don’t want to be the imperialists that are coming there and kicking people out. What matters is that the synagogue remain a house of worship for all Jews, open to all Jews,” he said. Touro Synagogue was dedicated in 1763 and is a national historic site. The synagogue was visited by George Washington in 1790, and he later sent its congregants a letter declaring that the government of the United States “gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.” It attracts tens of thousands of visitors annually.

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A rare moment of Purim sweetness in the Warsaw ghetto

After 77 years, the discovery of a small note attached to a Purim basket from the Warsaw ghetto in 1942 illustrates the sacrifice made by Jews who chose to observe the religious holidays, even as their loved ones were starving to death in front of their eyes.

A Polish man stumbled upon the note by mistake, but did not fully understand its significance. Nearly 80 years later, his son contacted the Shem Olam Faith & the Holocaust Institute, where it was recognized for its importance as a glimpse of Jewish life under the Nazis. 

The note attached to the Purim basket

The note attached to the Purim basket - a holiday in which gift-giving is traditional -  is also evidence of the unimaginable reality of life in the ghetto. The envelope bears the stamp of "the company that supplies the Jewish quarter in Warsaw" and a Star of David, and underneath in Hebrew is printed "Purim 1942."

The envelope also includes an instruction to "check the weight" of the small 100g parcel of ginger cookies within, implying that it was not to exceed the daily limit of calories that the Nazis allowed each Jew in the ghetto.  

An iconic image of Jews in the Warsaw ghetto (Photo: Getty images)

The Jews in the ghettos did tough physical labor under extreme conditions on 500 calories per a day; every loaf of bread or bowl of soup was essential to their physical survival. (According to British government guidelines, men should have an intake of around 2,500 calories per day, while women should consume around 2,000 calories daily.)

Shem Olam chief Rabbi Avraham Krieger calls the discovery unique as it "reflects a willingness by the Jews in the ghetto to observe their traditions despite the chaos and hunger that was a part of their everyday life, and despite the risk of dying for observing a holiday tradition."

Krieger added: "The Purim holiday had a strong meaning for the Jews in the ghetto because they saw Hitler as `Haman` of their time, and prayed for his defeat.

"The amount of cookies was small but it was so much more. had a much bigger spiritual meaning. It was a symbol of the Jews' battle to preserve their spirituality and their faith, as well as a human, social framework to keep their lives together."

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The two-planet solution

JERUSALEM, April 2, 2029 -- The State of Israel shocked the world today when it revealed that its entire population has been resettled on the surface of Mars.

  Israeli leaders called the massive and secret undertaking Shniyah Shemot, or "The Second Exodus", a reference to the departure of the Jews from slavery in ancient Egypt. The undertaking was timed to coincide with the Passover celebration on Earth that begins at sunset tonight, April 2.

Israelis on Mars

  The revelation stunned the world's political leadership and upended the equilibrium of international relations. The United Nations Security Council floated an emergency resolution to condemn Israel's departure from Earth as "an interstellar act of aggression" designed to "steal the future from the Palestinian People." The US and Germany vetoed the measure.

In a statement beamed to Earth, Israeli Prime Minister Danny Damrosch said: "Mars is a hostile and deadly environment, but we haven't found any Martians who want to kill us because we practice a different religion—so that’s a real bonus for us.”

The Israeli settlement is located at Arsia Mons, the site of an extinct volcano. The Israelis renamed the Martian surface "Zion". The landing site is being called New Jerusalem, which created an outpouring of anger across the Middle East, Eastern and Western Europe and among the far left in the United States. "Jerusalem belongs to the Palestinian people, here, on Mars -- everywhere," said Abbas Haniyeh, the leader of PIH, the Hamas & ISIS Party in Palestine. "The Zionists steal our lands on Earth and then steal our lands on other planets, but we will fight them wherever they go. We will crush them with asteroids!" Palestine achieved statehood in August 2021 and immediately launched a military invasion of Israel, backed by Iran, the Islamic Republic of France, and Russia. The invasion required the intervention of 22,000 Indian and Canadian troops to restore peace.

European, African and South American Jews joined the Martian adventure, leaving only American and Canadian Jewish populations behind. Sources said North American Jewish organizations felt angry and betrayed at being misled about the mission.

“We should have been consulted,” said Wurman Finkelstein, director of the American Jewish Committee. “I’m not saying this is a parent-child relationship, but we’ve always known what’s best for Israel.”

Right-leaning American Jews were said to be overjoyed with the operation. "Next year on Mars!" tweeted one prominent Republican Jewish CEO.

The United Nations General Assembly: Now with less Jews (Photo: EPA)

  

Arab and Muslim leaders seethed in anger at the sudden disappearance of their long-standing enemy. "We didn't become a state to live alongside the Jews. We became a state so we could push them all into the sea," Walid Jafar, the acting Prime Minister of Palestine, told Reuters. "They deprived the Muslim world of a happy ending." However, many moderate Muslim clerics and Arab intellectuals sent good wishes to the Israeli settlers and denounced the stream of angry rhetoric. "May Allah grant good luck, prosperity and abundant water to our Jewish cousins," said Sheikh Ahmad al-Adwan of Jordan. "Who doesn't want to live somewhere with peace and quiet?"

Anti-Israel organizations seemed unprepared to accept the new reality. Sweden, Belgium, Denmark, Britain's Labour Party and the University of California BDS movement condemned the exodus as "a continuation of the apartheid oppression.”

The group issued a statement that deplored the "intolerable second-planet status" of the Palestinian people and called for immediate missions to Mars to "reclaim newly occupied Palestinian territories," including "East New Jerusalem" and the "West Bank of Zion."

The leader of Iran's Revolutionary Guard announced that without Israeli or European Jews to physically attack, the state's proxy terror groups, such as Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad, would now harass and attack Christians with Jewish-sounding surnames, people who eat in kosher delis and anyone who listens to Barbra Streisand.

Barbra Streisand: Fans targeted (Photo: Getty Images)

The United Nations was thrown into institutional chaos. A Wall Street Journal review of UN activity dating to 2008 showed that 43 percent of all resolutions debated within the body were dedicated to denouncing or penalizing Israel. "Without Israel, the UN will have no one left to blame for anything," said a source at the US State Department. "The entire body will literally have no day-to-day agenda."

A source in Saudi intelligence said that about 100 non-aligned countries in the UN were frantically studying small, politically weak nations like Costa Rica, Andorra and Lichtenstein that could act as replacement global scapegoats.

America’s evangelical Christians, among Israel's most steadfast supporters, were devastated by the news. Thousands of churchgoers across the Midwest and South wept openly in their congregations Sunday morning.

Many evangelicals believe that "The Rapture" -- the appearance of the Messiah and the end of days -- will be instigated by a war between Israel and its enemies. That possibility now looks increasingly unlikely, said top Christian theologians.

"This is another annoying setback for the whole Rapture-industrial complex," said a left-leaning Baptist minister.

 

Bruce Stockler is a humorist and works in corporate communications in the advertising industry. He lives in the suburbs of New York City.

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Holocaust denier offering tours of Nazi death camps

Discredited British historian and Holocaust denier David Irving, who was jailed in Austria for his views on the genocide of the Jewish people, is offering tours of WWII death camps apparently to examine the subject of “Nazi history.”

 

The tours are being marketed under the title “Controversial Camps,” and are set to include visits to Treblinka, Sobibor, Majdanek and Belzec, all death camps associated with Operation Reinhard, the Nazi plan to wipe out European Jewry in its entirety. Six million Jews - two thirds of European Jewry and one third of the world's Jewish population - were murdered by the Nazis.  

Majdanek (Photo: AP)

Irving has begun collecting fees for the tours via his website and is even offering early bird discounts. The tours are set to take place beginning in September, over a period of nine days. Irving stated in advance that there will be no refunds if, for whatever reason, he or the group are banned from entering any of the camps. Irving bills himself as an expert on Adolf Hitler and guarantees that the tour will also include a visit to Hitler’s bunker, which today is buried under a parking lot in Berlin. In 2011, during a visit to Majdanek, Irving claimed that the crematoria there were “fake and were built after the Second World War.” In lectures to school students, Irving tells the pupils to be skeptical regarding what their teacher tells them about the gas chambers in the death camps.

The Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum condemned Irving’s intention to give tours of the camps and expressed hope that they would not in fact take place.

“Holocaust denial is a false conspiracy theory. Despite the fact that factually it is similar to claims of the earth being flat, it is actually dangerous and is used to conceal anti-Semitism and hatred. The presence of Holocaust deniers at sites of the genocide is an insult to the victims,” they stated.

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Pro-Hitler slogans, Nazi imagery deface Massachusetts Jewish cemetery

Police are investigating anti-Semitic messages and Nazi imagery scrawled on dozens of gravestones at a Jewish cemetery in Massachusetts. Fall River police say the vandalism at Hebrew Cemetery occurred over the weekend. Sgt. J.T. Hoar says police became aware of the graffiti Sunday after receiving a report of a suspicious vehicle that had been parked in the cemetery for two days. The vehicle was gone by the time officers arrived.

Anti-Jewish posters in Warsaw

The Herald News reports that at least 30 gravestones were tagged with swastikas and phrases including “heil Hitler” and “Hitler was right” in black marker. One stone was tagged with “Oy vey! This is MAGA country,” an apparent reference to President Donald Trump’s campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again.”

No arrests have been announced.

The incident is the latest in a chain of similar events that have taken place in the past year around the world, in particular in Europe, with swastikas and hate graffiti appearing on Jewish institutions and property in Poland, Greece, Spain, France and other countries.

In Madrid, two vandalism incidents that included Nazi graffiti took place in the passing year: one outside the home of emissaries from the World Zionist Organization, and a second in front of the house of a senior local Jewish activist and chairman of a Jewish organization fighting local boycotts of Israel.

  

In Manchester, in the north of England, headstones at Urmston Jewish Cemetery were vandalized in early February.

The anti-Jewish sentiment has also reached Poland, when large posters were placed on several residential buildings in Warsaw mid February. Signs read: "These buildings will soon be returned to the Jews, to meet their demands."

Nazi symbols daubed outside the home of Jewish activist Angel Mas

In the Greek capital Athens, anti-Semitic graffiti was sprayed in the yard of a Jewish school in the passing year. The graffiti said, among other things: "Jews are whores."

In France, which is home to the largest Jewish community in the world after Israel and the US, has seen an increasing number of such anti-Semitic attacks. Recent incidents include swastikas sprayed on mailboxes image of late French Jewish politician Simone Veil, who was a Holocaust survivor, a minister in the French government and president of the European Parliament.

In Paris, the word Juden (German for Jew) was daubed on the window of a bagel shop.

In another incident, the French-Jewish philosopher Alain Finkielkraut was attacked with anti-Semitic slogans when he came across a yellow vest demonstration in central Paris. Days later, at least 80 graves were desecrated in a Jewish cemetery near Strasbourg, in the eastern part of the country.

In addition, unknown assailants vandalized the Paris memorial to Ilan Halimi, a young French Jew who was tortured and murdered in a 2006 anti-Semitic attack that shocked France.

Also in February, anti-Semitic graffiti was painted on the facades of houses and street furniture in the 14th arrondissement of Paris. A municipal official said that there had been dozen cases of anti-Semitic graffiti sprayed on several streets in the southern part of the French capital.

In the wake of the wave of anti-Semitic incidents in France, tens of thousands took to the streets of Paris and other locations in the country in protest mid February.

Protest against anti-Semitism in Paris (Photo: AFP)

The Paris demonstration was attended by Prime Minister Edouard Philippe and former presidents François Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy. Before the rally, Philippe warned that anti-Semitism was "deeply rooted in French society."

In the U.S., other recent anti-Semitic vandalism acts included swastikas graffitied on a Jewish professor's office in Columbia University in New York City; “Heil Hitler,” graffiti in a Park in NYC; and a Southern California synagogue vandalized with anti-Semitic graffiti.

US Jewry experienced its worst ever anti-Semitic attack in October, 2018, when a gunman stormed a synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania during Shabbat services and shot worshipers, killing 11 and wounding six others.

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Kosher food, Dubai style

Israel's warming relationship with the Gulf states is intensifying – and for the first time, a kosher catering company has been established in Dubai. Kosher food is also expected to soon be a feature on Gulf airlines, and that is not all - a kosher restaurant is also planned for the United Arab Emirates.

 

The kosher catering company, Kosher Arabia, will serve all the Gulf states. It was founded by Ross Kriel, a Johannesburg-born lawyer who heads the Orthodox Jewish community in Dubai.

 

The kosher food section at a February 2019 intefaith conference in Abu Dhabi

At present, the company serves only dairy food, fish and vegetables. For now, it has no kashrut supervisor and it is doubtful that one will ever emerge, but the company passed the kosher test last month when Pope Francis visited the UAE.

The pope attended, among other things, an interfaith dialogue conference in the capital Abu Dhabi, where a kosher dining area was set up for the Jewish attendees.

Pope Francis and Sheikh Ahmed Al Tayeb, the Grand Imam of Al Azhar, embrace during a meeting in the UAE (Photo: Reuters)

Also present at the event was US Orthodox Rabbi Marc Schneier, who heads the Jewish-Muslim Interfaith Understanding Foundation and serves as a Jewish affairs advisor to the rulers of the Persian Gulf.

"It was so exciting to stand in line for kosher food in Abu Dhabi at a conference convened by Muslim leaders," says Schneier. "I ate fish and vegetables and a dessert." According to the rabbi, the catering company was established partly to serve Jewish business people and tourists who visit the Gulf.

He is currently discussing the next step with senior Gulf officials - opening a kosher restaurant in Dubai.

Rabbi Schneier with Bahraini King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa

"Many Jews visit the Gulf states, and they need kosher food. If there were such a thing here, more Jews would come there and everyone would benefit – the Jews from the kosher food, and the locals are from an increase in tourism.

Schneier said talks are also underway for Kosher Arabia to supply food to the Gulf airlines for the benefit of Jewish passengers.

"These are the steps that symbolize rapprochement," he said.

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Norway AG: 'F*cking Jews' is legitimate criticism of Israel

Norway's attorney general ruled Tuesday that a Norwegian Muslim rapper who said "f*cking Jews" during a concert was not engaging in anti-Semitic hate speech, but rather legitimate criticism of Israel.

 

The initial incident took place in June 2018, when rapper Kaveh Kholardi, who is of Iranian origin, was performing on stage at a municipal festival in Oslo. He asked the audience if there were any Muslims in the crowd. When some people responded, Kaveh wished them a happy Eid. He went on to ask if there were any Jews, and when no one reacted, he said "Fucking Jews."  He then said, "Just joking."

Kaveh Kholardi

According to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, the organizers of the family-friendly event, which was supposed to celebrate diversity, complained to the rapper. Kholardi had five days before the incident written on Twitter that “f*cking Jews are so corrupt.”

Kholardi later claimed that the comment at the concert had been taken out of context and was a joke. He was, the rapper wrote on Facebook, "neither a racist nor anti-Semite.” 

Local Jewish leader Ervin Kohn complained about the comment to police, calling it hate speech and incitement, but was told that it "falls within the freedom of speech of performance artists to make provocative and satirical statements." 

This finding was supported by State Prosecutor Trude Antonsen, who found that while derogatory and offensive, the remark did not constitute a criminal act.  

Kohn then appealed to Attorney General Tor Aksel Busch, who on Tuesday dismissed his appeal on the grounds that the "f*cking Jews" remark “seems to be targeting Jews, it can however also be said to express dissatisfaction with the policies of the State of Israel.”

Norwegian pro-Israel group MIFF called Busch’s decision “alarming” because he “finds ambiguity where there is none,” JTA reported.   

Israel's deputy ambassador to Norway, Dan Poraz, called the ruling "bizarre."

"The attorney general rejected an appeal against his decision to close the case against the Norwegian rapper who yelled 'F*cking Jews' on the grounds that it could be interpreted as criticism of Israel," he said. "I have lived in Norwary for the last four years and have no doubt that most Norwegians were disgusted by this anti-Semitic comment."

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Welcome home!

Some 30,000 new immigrants arrived in Israel from all over the world over the last year with the assistance of the Jewish Agency. They came from Europe, North America, the former Soviet Union, Africa, Asia and Australia - to build their home in Israel.

The decision by new immigrants to take part in our shared story has an impact on all aspects of Israeli society, as they contribute to research, science, medicine, economics, security, art, culture and sport.

A special project by Yedioth Ahronoth, Ynet and the Jewish Agency invites you to join us as we meet immigrants new and old, who have chosen to share their lives and experiences with us.

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The Pomerantz-Ben Abu family, Jerusalem

Countries of origin: France and Russia

 

Shosha and Yankel

 

Shosha Pomerantz, 26, completed her bachelor's degree in sports and dance in Moscow, followed by a master's degree in art and painting. She decided to do a professional internship in Israel as part of the Masa project, which is jointly run by the government and the Jewish Agency. After her internship, she began studying Hebrew at an ulpan, where she met Dr. Yankel Ben Abu, a French dentist.

They went on their first date on Valentine's Day 2017, married a year later and two weeks ago their eldest son, Eli, was born. The young family recently moved from Herzliya to Jerusalem. Yankel works as a dentist in a private clinic, and Shosha, who is on maternity leave, works as a designer of wedding invitations.

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The Kabasov family, Ashkelon

Country of origin: Belarus

 

The Kabasov family

 

Olga and Sergei Kabasov, aged 36 and 42 respectively, immigrated to Israel with their children Ilya, 10, and Nikita, 6, in April 2018. They live in the Beit Canada absorption center in Ashkelon. Sergei, who ran a pharmacy in Belarus, works as a truck driver to support the family. Olga was accepted to a course run by the Jewish Agency, the Ministry of Immigrant Absorption and the Tel-Ran company, in which immigrants undergo a professional conversion program. She hopes that at the end of her studies they will both find better employment.

Their son, Ilya, is involved in the sport of wrestling, which he began at an early age in Belarus, where he won medals. Upon their arrival, they encountered a very Israeli phenomenon: rockets from Gaza. "In the early days, after the barrages, it was hard for us to fall asleep at night," they admit.

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Nicolas Lampert, Tel Aviv

Country of origin: Uruguay

 

Nicolas Lampert

 

"When I walk around with a kippah in Israel, I feel at home," Lampert says. "My whole life I was connected to Jewish life and to Israel, and when I finished high school, I came for a gap year and other programs in Israel." After the year in Israel he returned to Uruguay. "I had a promising career in the family business in Montevideo, but I realized that this (Israel) is our home and I never gave up my dream of immigrating."

He fulfilled his dream when he moved to Israel alone in March 2018. He spent the first few months at the Jewish Agency absorption center, Ulpan Etzion, in Jerusalem, where he met his wife, who immigrated from England. He currently lives in Tel Aviv and is expected to join the IDF in a few weeks.

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Anna Gamzinova, Jerusalem

Country of origin: Ukraine

 

Anna Gamzinova

"My family was always forced to hide its Jewishness," says Anna, 23. "During the communist period, my grandmother was not even allowed to use her Jewish surname, but I knew from a young age to which nation I belonged. One day I went into the Jewish Agency building in Kiev and asked to come to Israel." Anna arrived for a 10-day visit as part of Birthright, and then returned for several months as part of the MASA project. "The moment I arrived in Israel, I knew that I had come home," she says. "I do not have relatives in Israel, but after I arrived I was invited to a barbecue in Jerusalem, where I met my partner, Yossi. It was love at first sight."

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The Brown Family, Ra'anana

Country of origin: South Africa

 

The Brown family

 

"We wanted to guarantee our children a Jewish future," says Barry Brown, 45, who immigrated to Israel I 2017 with his wife Claudine, 44, son Daniel, 16, and daughters Shira, 13, and Ora, 11. Barry started his acting and singing career as a child. He has appeared all over the world and built a magnificent career as a cantor in Cape Town.

When the family immigrated to Israel, he began renovating the house they had purchased in Ra'anana. After building a clinic for his beautician wife, Barry continued to work on house renovations, but did not give up his dream of performing. He is studying cantorial studies in Petah Tikvah, an event producer and in 2018 he competed to be Israel's entrant to the Eurovision Song Contest.

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Atankot Sitautau, Sha'ar HaNegev

Origin: Ethiopia

Atankot Sitautau

Atankot, 29, is a newly arrived immigrant. He arrived from Ethiopia on February 4 with his grandfather, uncles, and 34-year-old brother. They are part of the first 80 immigrants who arrived as part of Operation Yehudit. Sitautau was orphaned when he was a little boy, and his grandfather raised him and his brother.

"For 15 years we have been waiting to immigrate to Israel and reunite with my uncles, my mother's brothers, and now the dream has come true," says Atankot, who in recent years served as a cantor for the Jewish community waiting in Gondar to move to Israel. The family is currently in the Jewish Agency absorption center in the Sha'ar HaNegev Regional Council.

Atankot would be happy to meet with Israeli family, but preferably with an Amharic speaker who could help with the conversation.

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Yona Weissid Schneider, Nahariya

Country of origin: Brazil

 

Yona Weissid Schneider

 

Yona, 54, until recently a resident of Sao Paulo, immigrated to Israel following her son and daughter, who immigrated years before. She is spending her first months in Israel at the Tapuz absorption center in Nahariya, which assists immigrants from all over South America at the start of their lives in Israel. Yona's son, an architect by profession, immigrated five years ago. He was followed by his sister, who is now a soldier in the IDF. Her third son remains in Brazil.

In her native country, Yona ran an apartment building with 600 housing units. Now, while she finishes her Hebrew studies and finds employment in Israel, she is teaching her fellow residents at the absorption center how to make her secret (and excellent!) recipes.

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The Galsurkar siblings, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv

Country of origin: India

 

Ze'ev and Grace Galsurkar

 

Ze'ev (23) and Grace (26) Galsurkar immigrated last year from India. He lives in Jerusalem and eats kosher food, and she lives in Tel Aviv and is not observant. Grace came first, lived in an absorption center and studied Hebrew at an ulpan. Since she has a master's degree in commerce and accounting, she moved to Tel Aviv at the end of the studio and is employed in her professional field. Ze'ev remains in Jerusalem.

"The Jewish community in Mumbai is very warm and united," says Ze'ev. "I will never forget the rabbi of our community, Gavriel Holtzberg, who was murdered along with his wife in the (2008) terror attack at Chabad House a few days after I celebrated my Bar Mitzvah."

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Eric Surgeon, Jerusalem

Country of origin: England

 

Eric Surgeon

 

Eric, 91, is a very new immigrant, arriving in Israel on February 14, several months after his two daughters and six grandchildren. He is a British citizen of Iraqi origin who lived in India until the age of 17. He moved to England when his talent at playing viola landed him a full scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music in London.

Eric enjoyed a wonderful musical career in England - and among other things he took part in recordings by The Beatles and Eric Clapton, but his specialty is classical music. He is a widower and is happy to meet new Israeli friends.

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The Tarasov-Bagley family, Jerusalem

Country of origin: Ukraine

 

The Tarasov-Buagley family

 

Anna Tarasov, 23, and Stanislaw Bagley, 25, met online and married in Ukraine. Anna was working as a television presenter and Stanislaw was a medical student. Before he met Anna, Stanislaw visited Israel as part of Birthright and knew he would return to live here because "people are willing to help each other." Anna had never visited Israel. In 2017 they both came as part of the Masa project and lived in the Jewish Agency absorption center in Be'er Sheva, which takes in doctors from around the world. A year later they decided to immigrate. Stanislaw is doing an internship at Hadassah Hospital and Anna is starting a preparatory program for her academic studies.

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Holocaust survivor to meet California teens amid outrage over Nazi salute photos

An Auschwitz survivor and stepsister of Holocaust diarist Anne Frank will meet on Thursday with some California high school students seen in viral online photos giving Nazi salutes over a swastika made of red cups used in a drinking game.

  The anti-Semitic comments and images posted mainly on Snapchat, which included an image with the title "master race" - a reference to the Nazi belief in ethnic purity - drew national outrage. Holocaust survivor and peace activist Eva Schloss, 89, hoped that the students involved have the potential to become advocates of tolerance and understanding, organizers of the meeting said in a statement. "It's imperative that today's young people come face to face with the consequences of unchecked hatred," said Rabbi Reuven Mintz, director of the Chabad Center for Jewish Life in Newport Beach, California.

Swastikas and Nazi slautes at California teens' drinking game

The off-campus party was held at a home on Saturday night in Costa Mesa, California, which multiple media accounts said was attended by more than a dozen students from several high schools in upscale neighborhoods in Orange County.

The images included students with arms raised in a Nazi salute and about a dozen students crowded around the cups arranged in the shape of a swastika, media accounts said. Some students have since written letters of apology, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Eva Schloss (YouTube screenshot)

Schloss is the stepsister of Frank, whose diary about her experiences hiding from the Nazis and time in a death camp, became world famous. Frank died at age 15 at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany in 1945, after being transferred from Auschwitz, Poland. Schloss was captured by the Nazis in 1944 in Amsterdam and sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp, where her brother and father died, according to her biography posted on her website, evaschloss.com. Schloss and her mother were later liberated by the Russian Army, and her mother later married Frank's father, Otto, who died in 1980. The private meeting between Schloss and some students involved in the incident is scheduled to take place at Newport Harbor High School on Thursday, organizers said. Rabbi Mintz worked closely with school officials to help facilitate the discussion. "Our hope is that meeting someone who witnessed, firsthand, the atrocities committed under the same swastika and salute will help guide these students towards a life of tolerance and acceptance," he said. The Anti-Defamation League, which tracks acts of racism, reported that anti-Semitic incidents rose nearly 60 percent in the U.S. in 2017 from 2016.

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Polish Jewish leaders object as government mulls exhumations at Jedwabne pogrom site

WARSAW, Poland -- The Polish government is reconsidering whether to exhume human remains at a World War II-era site where Jews were burned alive by Polish neighbors, though the country's chief rabbi says the work would violate Judaism's prohibition on disinterment under most circumstances. Authorities will weigh "various circumstances" in deciding if exhumations should go forward in the town of Jedwabne, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki told private broadcaster Polsat News. During the German Nazi occupation of Poland, Poles killed at least 340 Jews on July 10, 1941. Most of the victims were locked inside a barn that was set on fire.

A visitor lays a stone at a memorial of the victims of the Jedwabne massacre (Photo: AP)

  Some Poles want the massacre site excavated to uncover possible evidence that Germans ordered Polish villagers to do the killings. The work was started in 2001 and stopped by the justice minister after several days due to Jewish objections. Chief Rabbi Michael Schudrich said exhuming the place where the barn stood "would desecrate the memory of those who were buried there." "It makes moral sense that we should follow the religious traditions of those who were buried there," Schudrich told The Associated Press. "Jewish law hasn't changed in 2,000 years, and what we said in 2001 remains the same now." The Jedwabne pogrom was one of several massacres carried out by Poles during the German occupation. Many historians see it as evidence that anti-Semitism existed in a significant part of the Polish population. Many Polish nationalists think it is unfair to blame Poles and that Germany bears the ultimate responsibility given the methods of terror and violence Nazis used in occupied Poland. Poland was occupied by Nazi Germany for more than five years during World War II. Nearly 6 million Polish citizens died, some 3 million Jews and almost as many non-Jews.

A Holocaust survivor displays the tattoo goiven him to him by the Nazis, at the entrance to Auschwitz death camp in Poland (Photo: AFP) (Photo: AFP)

That the question of exhuming remains has resurfaced reflects the pressure on Poland's ruling party from far-right groups that call historical evidence of Poles doing the killings to be a "Jewish lie." A right-wing TV broadcaster sparked the discussion anew by asking an official about it recently. The ruling Law and Justice party is led by the twin brother of the justice minister who stopped the earlier exhumation, Lech Kaczynski. He was killed along with 95 others in 2010 when the Polish air force plane they were on crashed in Russia. The surviving brother, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, has taken the party on a more nationalistic course in recent years. Once the government decides whether to proceed with an excavation, prosecutors will have the final, Morawiecki told Polsat News in an interview on Tuesday.

"For us, the most important thing is for historical truth to be emphasized, and the historical truth about the fate of Poles during the time of World War II is extremely sad for us," the prime minister said. "But it also testifies to what a splendid, great nation we are and who bears the sole guilt for the Holocaust."

Protests at the entrance to Auschwitz against Polish efforts to reject any culpability for the Holocaust (Photo: AFP) (Photo: AFP)

Poland has been quick to denounce anyone accused of linking the country to the well-documented history of anti-Semitism and violence against Jews that took place there during and after the wartime Nazi occupation. Israeli officials see Poland's controversial legislation as an attempt to suppress such discussion, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has faced criticism from historians in Israel for not opposing the law, which critics say distorts history.

Many Poles refuse to accept research showing thousands of their countrymen participated in the Holocaust in addition to thousands of others who risked their lives to help the Jews, insisting that all atrocities on its soil were committed by the German occupiers.

Tensions between Israel and Poland rose last year after Poland's nationalist government introduced new legislation that would have made the use of phrases such as "Polish death camps" punishable by up to three years in prison. After pressure from the United States and an outcry in Israel, Poland watered down the legislation, scrapping the prison sentences.

A fresh diplomatic row over the issue broke out between Israel and Poland last month, when some Israeli media reported remarks by Netanyahu in which he appeared to accuse the Polish nation of involvement in the Holocaust.

Netanyahu's office said he had been misquoted in his response to a reporter's question during a visit to Warsaw about Polish legislation related to Holocaust remembrance, and that he had not cast any blanket blame. But the spat reignited days later whe the interim foreign minister Yisrael Katz said that "many Poles" had collaborated with the Nazis in World War II and shared responsibility for the Holocaust. He also referenced a quote from the late former prime minister Yitzhak Shamir, who said that Poles "suckled anti-Semitism with their mothers' milk."

As a result, Poland withdrew from a formal gathering of the central European Visegrad Group of countries, with Poland's Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki denouncing Katz's comments as "racist" and "absolutely unacceptable." The summit was then cancelled.

Reuters contributed to this report

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Sweden teaching the Holocaust to young refugees

They grew up in Syria, Afghanistan and Somalia and can place Israel on a map, but many young refugees in Sweden have never heard of the Holocaust.

 

Their first contact with Jewish history in Europe is often in the classroom and sometimes from the teachers themselves.

"One of my teachers was harassed by other students. He's Jewish and they made fun of him all the time," says Nergis Resne, a 19-year-old born in Sweden to Turkish-Macedonian parents.

Kippah Walk, Malmo Sweden

She has since joined the group Young People Against Anti-Semitism and Xenophobia founded by Siavosh Derakthi in Malmö, Sweden's third-biggest city where one in three inhabitants was born abroad. Organizations and a foundation started by Stieg Larsson, the late author of the best-selling Millennium crime trilogy, are taking on the challenge of helping students and teachers fight against anti-Semitism. Despite online threats against him, Derakthi, 27, organizes seminars in schools, group talks and study visits to former concentration camps to raise young people's awareness of the horrors of the mass killing of Jews during World War Two and the need for peaceful co-existence. "Some of them come from dictatorships, from warzones brimming with anti-Semitic, homophobic and misogynistic beliefs," explains Derakthi, originally from Iran, who in 2013 won the first Raoul Wallenberg Prize in honor of the Swedish diplomat who save thousands of Jews in the war. Educators say their job is made more difficult by the vast amount of prejudice, fake news and conspiracy theories circulating on social networks.

Living History Forum Museum

"The most popular is without a doubt YouTube, where the radical far-right propaganda and the propaganda from radical Islam occasionally overlap," says Jonathan Leman, a researcher at the Larsson-founded Expo foundation. Expo put together a booklet after 90 of the 100 teachers it surveyed in 2016 said their students believed conspiracy theories including that the Holocaust either never happened or did not happen in the way it's told in history books.

A stone's throw from Expo, in Stockholm's Old Town, Ingrid Lomfors welcomes thousands of students each year to the Living History Forum museum. Here the aim is to foster understanding by appealing to people's compassion and touching their hearts, rather than giving lessons in morality.

"Last year I had a wonderful exchange with three young Muslim girls about Anne Frank," the Jewish girl in Amsterdam who wrote a diary before she died in a concentration camp, says Lomfors. "They knew nothing about Anne Frank. They walked through the exhibit, and then at the end two of them told me they identified with her, because of the isolation, the constant threats, the persecution, not knowing if they'd be alive the next day." In Malmö, Imam Salahuddin Bakarat and Rabbi Moshe-David HaCohen have together founded the Amanah project aimed at building bridges between their two communities through festivals, workshops and lectures. The challenge is rendered even more difficult by urban segregation, with large numbers of immigrant youths concentrated in the same neighborhoods and schools.

Molotov cocktails thrown at synagogue in Gothenburg in 2017

According to the most recent report by the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention in 2016, three percent of crimes of religious, ethnic, political or sexual nature had an anti-Semitic character, in a country of 10 million people that is home to 15,000 to 20,000 Jews.

In one such case, young migrants from Syria and the Palestinian territories were convicted for throwing Molotov cocktails at a synagogue in Gothenburg in December 2017. No one was injured in the attack. In 2016, anti-Muslim crimes were more than twice as common as anti-Semitic ones, at seven percent. Mosques and migrant housing centers were the targets of numerous attacks. Police have not seen any significant rise in the number of anti-Semitic crimes reported since 2014, even though Sweden has taken in 400,000 migrants since then, more than any other European country per capita. Sweden does not include ethnicity in its crime statistics. Last year 35 police reports of anti-Semitic crimes were filed in Malmö, a number seen as stable but in all likelihood below the actual number, suggests Malmö police official Zandra Brodd. Meanwhile three out of four Swedes believe anti-Semitism has grown in the past five years – the highest proportion in the European Union – according to a Eurobarometer study published by the European Commission in December. "Many Jews choose to keep a low profile in public. They may for example hide a Star of David pendant inside their shirt or take off their kippah as soon as they leave the synagogue," says a spokesman for Malmö's Jewish community, Fredrik Sieradzki. In January, Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven pledged to allocate more funding so more youths can visit Holocaust memorial sites in Europe, and Sweden will host an international genocide conference in 2020.

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